Upconverting/upscaling vs "normal" pro-scan?

[Jedi2016]

I've been trying to figure this out lately, what with all the hubbub about upscaling and so forth.

I know everybody makes a big stink about how an upconverted signal is "1080i/p" or whatever, but the original source is still just 480p. How much better can an upscaled image look when the source material only contains so much information? To me, it's like upscaling a picture in Photoshop. It's bigger, sure, but it's not really any better.

Now, I know all the ins and outs of interlacing/deinterlacing/progressive and all that. Having worked directly with raw video sources in a variety of formats, I have a full understanding of how they work (which is a rarity on most of the boards I visit.. hehe).

So basically, is there a difference between "upconverted" video on a HD display versus just displaying a 480p image on that same display?

Bear in mind I don't have any first-hand knowledge of this.. of all the fancy gadgets in my HT, my TV is still antiquated. For two reasons. One, I'm not in a position where I can easily drop a few grand on a nice big HD set, although I'm working on it (eyeballing the Westinghouse 47" 1080p). And Two, I'm one of those people who doesn't like to replace something unless it's broken or otherwise useless. Since my old Sanyo still works just fine, and has surprisingly good picture quality considering it's age, I'm kind of loathe to replace it, since I don't really need to, ya know?

Speaking of pro-scan, is there a way to determine what kind of pro-scan my DVD player and/or TV actually performs? (Once I get a TV that does it, I mean.. hehe.. My DVD player is pro-scan, though). On the one hand, there's "proper" pro-scan, where it does inverse 3:2 pulldown, or otherwise "merges" the two fields into a single full frame, and there's the "crap" kind of pro-scan where it simply discards one field entirely, so you end up seeing only half of the vertical resolution.

Feel free to get as technical as you like, I'll understand it.

 

[MDS]

You are spot on with your Photoshop analogy. However, upscaling has to happen somewhere - either in the receiver, the dvd player, or the TV.

All HD TVs are fixed pixel and can display one resolution and one resolution only. Any image whose resolution does not match the native resolution of the TV must be scaled. Receivers and DVD players are starting to include upscaling as a feature but it's more a marketing gimmick than anything else in my opinion (although there will be a few cases where the receiver or dvd player do a better job of upscaling than the TV). If you let the receiver or dvd player upscale to the same resolution as the TV, then the TV won't touch it. If your TV actually has a non HD resolution like 1366 x 768, then what's the point of having a receiver or dvd player upscale 480p to 720p or 1080i only to have the TV turn around and rescale it 1366 x 768? It all comes down to which device has a better scaler implementation.

Pretty much every TV now includes 3:2 pulldown. By the way all HD TVs are also progressive scan. If you send it an interlaced image it will do the deinterlacing. Again it comes down to whether the dvd player or TV does the better job of deinterlacing. In this case though I think higher end DVD players have the advantage.

 

[Jedi2016]

You are spot on with your Photoshop analogy.... Receivers and DVD players are starting to include upscaling as a feature but it's more a marketing gimmick than anything else in my opinion (although there will be a few cases where the receiver or dvd player do a better job of upscaling than the TV).

That's what I thought. My DVD player isn't top of the line by any standards (Sony NS575, got it about a year ago for around $90 or so). As for deinterlacing, I'll probably run comparison tests between the player and the TV to see which is better. It'd be nice if I could do it on the fly, but I'm not sure how the player will respond to being switched back and forth like that (it actually has a small switch on the back of the player). Hopefully it'll be a big enough difference to tell either way.

Thanks for the reply.

Good point about the resolutions, too, considering so many "HD" TVs have those oddball resolutions. At least the Westinghouse is standard.. 1920x1080, plain and simple.